European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012.
2012 DA14 is an approximately 40 meter diameter asteroid that will take a close approach to Earth in early 2013. Contrary to some reports on the web, there is no danger of it hitting us during this encounter. This visualization shows the trajectory of the asteroid as computed by JPL's HORIZONS
